Functional dairy: Formulating energy into dairy foods
Many energy drinks are burdened with ingredients consumers don’t recognize or can’t pronounce but they understand ‘dairy.’ The road to developing dairy-based energy beverages may one day lead to ‘energy cheese’ snacks.
Euromonitor data confirm what many of us already knew: Energy beverages are going gangbusters. Sales topped $11.1 billion and two billion liters in 2016.
But dairy processors could be forgiven for seeing a cloud behind the silver lining. You’d be hard-pressed to find many dairy-based drinks contributing to energy’s success. American shelves may boast of some 400-plus energy drinks from more than 200 different brands, but “the development of dairy-based energy drinks lags far behind these numbers,” said Jonathan Hopkinson of DuPont Nutrition & Health, New Century, Kan.